Optimizing Your AdWords Account

Google AdWords offers both the ability to create a basic and well performing advertising campaign as well as a set of advanced tools that can really fine tune your campaign for optimized performance. It is the best Pay Per Click search advertising tool there is. It takes time and diligent effort, but the payoff in traffic, leads and sales is there. I have found that following a careful process of analysis and optimization can often double the ROI on a Google AdWords campaign.

Here are a few of the key componentss to address in optimizing a campaign.

Keyword Bidding

Keep in mind that in addition to being the best search engine, Google also is the best at optimizing their way deeper into your wallet. When you first create your AdWords account, I recommend that you choose an automatic billing setting, which Google will happily recommend. Their recommendation is a good place to start, but a week or two into your advertising campaign you should view the keyword reports and look for opportunities to get more for your money. Have a look at your daily budget in the billing section. If you are maxing out your daily budget, then you are missing on some clicks. Go into your campaign setting and lower your max click bid by 10%. Using the same campaign budget dollars, you should see a few more clicks as your bids will be adjusted downward slightly, few cents for each click. Also keep a careful eye on the average position of your impressions. If you start slipping below position 3.5 then your ads in a poor performing place and adjusting your bids downward will not be in your best interest. If your average position is above 1.5 then you are most definitely bidding higher than you need. I have found the optimal range to be anywhere from 2.7 to 1.6. In a future blog article we will discuss an advanced technique, individual keyword bids.

If you need professional assistance to set up you AdWords campaign, we have Google Certified AdWords Professional on staff.

Reviewing Opportunities

As I mentioned before, Google knows how to optimize their way deeper into your wallet. One way they do this by presenting you with Opportunities to improve your AdWords account performance. Often this is in the form of additional keyword suggestions to add to your campaign. Review their suggestions carefully to make sure that what they suggest is relevant and important to your marketing strategy. They have the biggest and best database of search traffic and keywords. Somewhere in their data vaults is the combinations that will help you get more clicks on your ads. This makes you more productive, and makes Google more money. You both win. But review the keyword suggestions from Google carefully. You need to ensure that what they suggest is what you want. Don’t just blindly accept a new batch of keyword recommendations (sometimes 100 new keywords at a time). You may only find a few are appropriate to your AdWords campaign and your business.

One Ad is Good, Multiple Ads are Great

Besides having the best search database, Google is great at A/B or split testing. This is a method of comparing results between several options in the same situation, and then selecting the best performing combination. This is built into Google AdWords, but you need to give it the material to work with. This is done by writing multiple ads for your campaigns, for the same set of keywords. This combination of ads and keywords is known as an Ad Group. Initially Google will display all the ads in your ad group equally, then, using your ad performance (click through rate), it will display the better performing ad more frequently. I recommend that for each ad group, you write a minimum of 3 ads. You need to ensure that the ads are somewhat different from each other, swap the 2nd and 3rd lines and change the heading, for example, to create a variation of an ad.

Improve with Testing

Within your AdWords account, everything is tracked and reports can display your results on many dimensions. Never change anything blindly. Always make record of what you change and then review your results in a week and see if your changes have had the effect you wanted. Don’t be afraid to test an idea. If your test fails (it does not drive increased traffic) then all it cost you some time. Failed ideas are almost free in AdWords as if there are no clicks resulting, then you are not charged.